


Tomorrow, On the Beach

by fabrega



Category: Edge of Tomorrow (2014), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, M/M, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-09
Updated: 2014-07-09
Packaged: 2018-02-08 02:41:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1923699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabrega/pseuds/fabrega
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark wakes up, and he isn't dead. That should be a good thing, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tomorrow, On the Beach

**Author's Note:**

> Major spoilers for Edge of Tomorrow. As always, thanks to Alex for the help.

Tony Stark wakes up, and he isn't dead--which is weird, okay, because the last thing he remembers is dying. He remembers it very distinctly, remembers all of yesterday very distinctly: they'd strapped him into an armor suit, he'd been dropped on a beach that was crawling with alien mimics that weren't supposed to have known they'd been coming, he'd had a panic attack, and he'd died.

The day before that, he'd been somehow press-ganged into the Army--which really shouldn't be a thing people can do in this day and age--and told he was going to be dropped on the beach; the phrase "glorious combat" had been used.

(The day before _that_ , he'd sassed a general who'd wanted to send him to the beach. If he had to identify a point at which his life had gone wrong, that would be a strong candidate. Before that point, he'd been an insanely-well-paid defense contractor, charged with providing the enhanced suits of weaponized armor to the army. The general had been of the opinion that Tony's presence on the beach in one of his armor suits would help the war effort somehow. Tony had attempted to convince him that he could do more good far away from the front, building more suits, and what he'd done after that could probably _technically_ be construed as blackmail, in the sense that he'd told the general that Stark Industries would stop making armored suits if Tony was sent into a warzone, but Tony viewed it less as 'blackmail' and more as 'creative negotiations for his continued existence'. He just _made_ the things; he certainly wasn't cut out to wear one. The general had...disagreed.)

At least he's not dead.

A man shouts at him to get up. He looks remarkably like the man who had shouted at Tony the morning after he'd been press-ganged into service a few days ago.

Come to think of it, these handcuffs--

Another man approaches. He looks familiar, and a sinking feeling grows in Tony's stomach. The man explains ( _again_ , Tony thinks, _the man explains again_ ) about the battle on the beach, his upcoming participation in it, and the redemptive qualities of "glorious combat". He introduces Tony to his fellow soldiers, men and women Tony would swear he'd seen die on the same beach yesterday that he had.

This has to be a bad dream--this, or maybe yesterday was? Maybe he's still dying right now and all of this is in his head, like that dumb short story he vaguely remembers from English class. He's dying, he's lying on the beach and his face is melting off and--and--and this is what his brain comes up with? There should be women in swimsuits. There should be booze. At the very least, he should be home. His brain is _fired_.

He waits to die.

He waits to wake up.

*

He lands on the beach, and he dies again. He wakes up in exactly the same place: the press-gang, the handcuffs, the "glorious combat" speech.

Twice is a coincidence; three times is a pattern; enough times to lose track, well, that's a hell of a lot of times to die on a beach. He's getting better at the armor suit (it only makes sense--he _did_ design it, after all) and better at remembering the ebbs and flows of the battle, which in turn makes him better at not dying, or at the very least at not dying so quickly. What this means is that, after some unspecified number of days, Tony finally makes his way to him--him, Colonel James Rhodes, the Savior of Verdun. He's wearing a custom armor suit and holding a giant machete and the sun is shining on him through the downed dropship behind him like a messiah complex's wet dream.

While Tony takes a moment to steady himself (because _holy shit_ ) Rhodes slices apart a mimic that had snuck up behind Tony, double-tapping it with the laser that's built into the palm of the armor suit. Then he turns to Tony. "What the hell are you doing?"

Tony forces his mouth to work. "I--this ship is going to explode in about thirty seconds, you need to _move_." Without looking, he fires his lasers at one, two, three enemies to his right. He'd missed them last time, had watched Rhodes watch him get murdered. It had not been a great first meeting.

"How did you--" Rhodes asks, squinting hard at Tony.

"Less than thirty seconds, you need to move _now_ ," Tony interrupts, grabbing Rhodes' wrist and honest-to-god pulling. He's not sure why this is so important to him, saving this man, like if he can just save the Savior of Verdun, victory will follow them both suddenly and swiftly, like James Rhodes is all this battle needs to go well for humanity. Rhodes had done it once before, so it wasn't _that_ far-fetched, right?

Even with the full weight of Tony's suit pulling on him, Rhodes does not budge. "Find me when you wake up," he says to Tony.

Tony gapes at him. "What?"

"Come find me when you wake up," Rhodes repeats, and the last thing Tony feels before the dropship explodes and he wakes up again in handcuffs is Rhodes' fingers closing around his wrist.

*

It takes him a few loops-worth of trying, a few deaths and a few fresh starts, but Tony finally finds Rhodes in one of the training bays. He is seated on the floor of the bay, legs folded, hands on knees, eyes closed. Tony tries calling his name; when he doesn't get a response, Tony steps out into the bay. Rhodes opens one eye and watches as Tony weaves his way past the training drones, a slightly less-serene look on his face.

"You look lost," Rhodes says when Tony finally skids to a stop in front of him. Is that--that sounds like a threat. Is that a threat?

A drone whizzes past Tony's shoulder, and he nods at Rhodes before he can stop himself. "You said that I should come find you," Tony says in what he hopes is a pointed tone.

"I'm sorry," Rhodes says, climbing to his feet, " _When_ did I tell you that?"

"Tomorrow," Tony says. He leans forward into Rhodes' personal space, his voice low. "Tomorrow, on the beach."

Rhodes' whole expression changes into something unreadable, and desperate, Tony repeats, "You said to find you--"

*

Rhodes drags him down into a secret basement room, which, why does the weird pop-up army base even have one of those? They meet with a dark-haired woman that Rhodes introduces as Dr. Hansen--she's a scientist, supposedly, although the grease-stains on her hands suggest that she's working on-base as a mechanic for the armor suits.

They eye each other suspiciously, Tony and Dr. Hansen. "You don't look like one of mine," Tony says before he can help it.

"Like one of your whats?" Dr. Hansen asks. She scowls at Tony defiantly, and he realizes what his statement sounds like.

He scrambles for a reasonable answer to that, one that doesn't out him as a billionaire CEO who helped equip this base and hundreds like it, until Rhodes cuts in. "One of his techs, probably. You're Tony Stark, right?"

"Like 'Stark Industries' Tony Stark?" Dr. Hansen looks incredulous.

"In the flesh." Tony makes a sheepish face--well, probably a sheepish face. He's seen what they look like, on other people, but he's not sure he's ever quite perfected the look himself.

"You _built_ these suits," Dr. Hansen says. The look of skepticism has not yet left her face. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Tony snorts. "I ask myself that every day...well, mostly just today, over and over."

"He's me, before Verdun," Rhodes clarifies.

Dr. Hansen's skeptical look deepens. "You're in a time loop? What am I thinking about right now?"

"How am I supposed to know that?"

"Early days, then," she says, not taking her eyes off Rhodes.

"He says he met me on the beach tomorrow," Rhodes says, which seems to be enough for Dr. Hansen.

"I was thinking of a conference I attended in Switzerland," she says to Tony, almost as an aside, as she uncovers a tabletop technical display. It's not as nice as what Tony's got at home, but it's the most sophisticated piece of equipment (armor suits notwithstanding) that Tony's seen in this hellhole. He makes a mental note about the conference, because that's the kind of shit that ends up being important in movies like Groundhog Day.

The next half-hour or so is a lesson in exobiology that Tony tries to pay attention to, really he does, but the idea of dying again tomorrow is weighing ever-heavier on him, and he'd sort of hoped that _come find me when you wake up_ meant plans, not theories. "Okay," he interrupts after what feels like fifteen hours but is probably closer to twenty minutes, "So let me see if I've got this straight. Your plan is to wait until I start to have visions, then follow those visions to this so-called Omega mimic--which is like its hivemind brain--and when I get there, I kill it and then everything is great?"

Rhodes and Dr. Hansen exchange a look (the thought ricochets through Tony's head unwanted: _maybe they're sleeping together_ ) and Rhodes says grimly, "No, _I_ kill the Omega mimic."

"And anything sounds stupid when you say it like that," Dr. Hansen adds.

"Right, right because my tone of voice was the only thing wrong with that sentence." Tony rolls his eyes.

It looks like he and Dr. Hansen could argue for hours--hell, there may end up being loops where they do--but for now, Rhodes takes Tony by the arm and leads him back towards the training bays, presumably for Make Tony Not Suck At His Own Suits training. God knows he could use it.

As Rhodes straps him into the training suit, he looks up at Tony and asks, his voice even, "So when were you gonna tell me?"

"Tell you what?" Tony _wishes_ his voice could stay that even; he sounds like he's panicking, because he is, a little.

"That you're Tony Stark."

"It's not like it matters." Tony sighs grandly. "It didn't keep me from getting into this clusterfuck, and it won't help me get out. Believe me, I've tried." He _had_ tried; the people in this camp were shockingly unreceptive to bribes, although Tony had found previously that bribery tended to work better when you actually had access to a checkbook to wave enticingly as you made your offer--funny how that worked.

Rhodes doesn't look up from where he's strapping Tony into the suit. "It means you're not Army. It means you'll need more training."

"Oh, yeah, no, definitely not Army," Tony agrees. "Closest I ever got was sleeping with a couple of ROTC guys in college." (Tony stares down at Rhodes as he says this, looking for a reaction, but his gaze darts elsewhere as soon as Rhodes looks up.) "But I slept with a lot of people in college. Oh, and I guess I'm also a defense contractor, which is sort of close to Army?" He dares to look back at Rhodes now. Rhodes looks...cool. Unfazed. Tony's not sure what reaction he had wanted, but he can definitely live with this one.

(At least until tomorrow.)

To say that training does not go well would be an understatement. Tony dodges two training drones, firing his weapon at the spaces where they'd just been, and then the third smashes into him, throwing him across the bay and into the concrete wall spine-first. He makes pitiful noises as Rhodes shuts the drones down and walks over to him, frowning.

"You okay?" Rhodes asks.

"I... I think I broke something."

Tony does not like the look on Rhodes' face. "What?"

"My pride, for sure," Tony says, struggling to look up at Rhodes. "And possibly my back? I can't move my anything."

At least, he thinks as he stares down the barrel of Rhodes' gun, Rhodes trusts him about the time loop stuff. Hopefully he wouldn't be so quick to shoot him in the face otherwise.

He wakes up in handcuffs.

*

Tony runs. He's not sure why he hasn't tried it earlier. It is entirely within his nature to flee from conflict--well, okay, that's not true, he thrives on conflict, he just avoids the actual act of physical combat whenever he can because he's really not cut out for it. It takes him a few loops to make it out successfully, but he ends up back on the streets of London, a free man once more. He makes his way to the airport where, hopefully, his private jet is still waiting for him. It's a little bit complicated getting onto the plane without his ID, but eventually he is seated onboard, a drink in one hand and a phone in the other.

He dials the number for his PA, Ms. Potts. When she picks up, she begins by berating him. "Where have you _been_?! It's not like you to drop off the grid and miss such a big meeting."

"Whoa, Pepper, slow down, what meeting?" It's been what feels like months since he'd first landed in London, but he's pretty sure his schedule hadn't been particularly full while he was here; there's not a whole lot of business to do this close to a warzone, even for an arms manufacturer.

"The meeting with the general, Tony! The reason you're in London! Happy said you didn't come back to the hotel after the meeting was supposed to have ended, and when I called the general's office to see if he had any idea where you might have gone, the general's secretary said you hadn't even bothered to show up!"

Tony glowers at his drink, for lack of anyone or anything better to glare at. "Oh, so that's what they're saying?"

"That's what they're saying, and the board's buying it," Pepper confirms. The board has wanted Tony in a position of less power for a while; that they're willing to write him off this quickly and this easily speaks volumes. "You need to find some way to salvage this."

"Trust me, Pep, I'll figure this--" Tony begins, but he stops as the pilot's voice comes over the plane's intercom.

"Sir? Please buckle in; we aren't cleared for takeoff, but under the circumstances we're going to go ahead anyway."

"Circumstances?" Tony echoes. He hears Pepper's voice on the phone, saying something in a worried tone, but her words are lost as he looks out the window of the plane and sees a horde of mimics approaching his location. The city is already on fire. He swears into the phone, tells Pepper that he'll fix this before hanging up, and closes his eyes and wills the plane into the air faster.

He wakes up in handcuffs.

*

"You look lost," Rhodes says.

He says it every morning, every day that Tony shows up for training. Tony gets better at the approach, better at knowing where the training drones are going to be, better at knowing how to look and what to say, what words and phrases will sway Rhodes' thinking, change his mind, but it always starts like that. (It's obviously a threat, Tony realizes after a while, when he approaches with confidence and Rhodes still stares him down. Rhodes is giving him an out and giving him a warning, _you do not belong here_ , before he calls the MPs or kicks Tony's ass himself.)

He gets better at the suit too, he thinks. It's hard to tell some days, covered in bruises, panting on the floor, Rhodes looking at him with exasperation, disappointment, calculation. The days he's not too badly beat up, he gets to go die on the beach, a reward; the days he's too beat up, Rhodes takes his sidearm from its holster and says _again_ and Tony wakes up in handcuffs.

Some days he gives up on training, bypasses training, because he's still not convinced that his failures on the battlefield are entirely his fault. He gets Dr. Hansen to let him into the repair shop and he tinkers with the suit that's his despite having not put it on yet, tries to coax anything more from it that he can: power, precision, speed, battery life, he will take anything at this point. It's not his lab in New York, but he gets pretty good at recreating the same series of improvements every day, slightly better each time.

Dr. Hansen isn't much help, really--her field is biotech more than engineering, but she's got some good ideas on how to tweak the suit's lasers for maximum effect on mimic biology.

Rhodes comes in some days too, depending on how things had gone in Tony's introduction, if Tony had been impatient or forthcoming or flirty, and it turns out _he_ has an engineering degree to go along with his unbelievable amount of experience in the suit, so he has a bunch of good suggestions for things that would be useful and how to go about implementing them.

"Is there anything you _can't_ do?" Tony says as Rhodes takes a screwdriver to one of the delicate mechanisms in the suit's chest module. It comes out about a thousand percent less sarcastic than he'd meant for it to--it almost sounds sincere--and Tony certainly can't have that.

"Reset the day," Rhodes says after a moment. "Can't do that."

"Oh, well," Tony grumbles. He takes the screwdriver from Rhodes and elbows him out of the way, diving into the work himself. "Good to know I'm good for something." Rhodes doesn't say anything, and when Tony glances up, his normally grim expression has softened into--well, not a full smile, there _is_ a war on, but definitely something approaching a smirk. It feels like the screwdriver has gone directly into Tony's actual chest, and his mouth gapes open for a second as he his brain tries to process it. He can't be, there's no way--

Dr. Hansen returns with lunch and asks about their progress, and the moment has passed. He and Rhodes die on the beach the next morning.

*

"You look lost," Rhodes says.

"A little less every day," Tony says, and he smiles.

*

They are driving across France.

Tony had started his introduction the day before with a pretty intense info-dump: "I'm Tony Stark--yes, _that_ Tony Stark. I killed an Alpha mimic and now I have that thing you had during Verdun where you're stuck in a time loop. You told me I was going to have visions, and then I did; the Omega mimic is in Germany. I need you to believe me _now_ so I can spend the rest of the day modifying my suit and briefing you on our plan."

Rhodes had looked at him coolly.

Tony had finished: "So, no, not lost. Just in a hurry."

And it had worked, the suit upgrades and the tactics briefings, and now they are driving across France in a stolen SUV, headed for the German border. Rhodes is in the passenger seat. Tony had sort of expected him to be nervously vigilant, eyes peeled, scanning their surroundings for potential ambushes, but instead he is sitting with his eyes closed, breathing slowly and deeply like he always is when Tony first approaches him.

"You know, you talk to me eventually," Tony says. It's the first time they've made it onto the road at all, so Tony is bluffing. The previous loop, they had been attacked before they could get the car into a gear past third, and Tony is so elated to make it onto the road that he thinks he might as well try.

"Do I," Rhodes says. It's not a question. "What do I talk about?"

Tony, because he is Tony, continues to bluff instead of admitting that he was bluffing; it turns out that he knows less about Rhodes than he thought he did, and the bluffing goes very, very poorly. He contemplates just driving them both off the road out of sheer embarrassment before he accidentally takes a wrong turn into a mimic ambush and kills them both anyway. He wakes up in handcuffs.

*

They are driving across France.

It is taking every ounce of Tony's strength not to say anything, to let Rhodes nap or meditate or whatever it is he's doing in the passenger seat with his eyes closed. He is not a fan of silence; it makes him uncomfortable.

He turns on the radio.

"You know," Rhodes says after a little bit, "This isn't the first time we've met."

Tony rolls his eyes. "That's kind of the point of a time loop--"

"No, before yesterday, before any of your yesterdays." Tony does not say anything, just lets him talk. "After Verdun, the brass thought I deserved a fancy new suit, and I came to New York to get fitted for it. You yelled at me to get out of your lab."

Tony offers his best _eccentric billionaire genius, what are you gonna do_ shrug. He remembers that day, has remembered it since the first loop he'd come face to face with Rhodes, on the beach; he's been wondering how long it would take for it to come up. "If it makes you feel any better, I yell at pretty much everybody to get out of my lab," he offers.

Rhodes' mouth bends into that smirk again. "It's a good suit." After a moment, he goes on: "You know, my friends call me Rhodey."

*

"You look lost," Rhodes says.

"No, Rhodey, I really don't think that I am," Tony responds, looking unreasonably smug.

He spends the day before the beach in a cell, and it's totally worth it.

*

They are driving across France.

"Why do you do this?" Tony asks, taking his hands from the wheel to gesture vaguely at everything around him.

"This?"

"This. Fighting. Getting up every day and putting on the armor suit and murdering giant, horrifying tentacle monsters from outer space."

Rhodey shrugs--shrugs!--and says, "Somebody has to do it."

"Really? The 'if not me, who' thing is what gets you up in the morning?"

"What should I be doing instead? I volunteered for the Army's suit pilot program from the Air Force as soon as it was open and I haven't looked back."

"Not once? Not even when you were in the middle of _your_ Alpha-induced time loop nightmare?"

Rhodey huffs a laugh. "What good would it have done?"

"I don't know; when you watch the same disasters happen over and over again, watch people you know and maybe even care about die every day no matter what you do, that can get a little disheartening. Doesn't matter if it does any good, it just _is_." Tony is aware of the careful look Rhodey is giving him. He knows what he'd said and what it sounds like, but he is too deep into the funk he's describing to really care.

"But what would you do? Did it make any difference when you stopped following the script and ran away from your responsibilities?"

Tony glares at him. "Hey, I have responsibilities to my shareholders too, and--wait, I didn't say that I ran away."

Rhodes gives him a look that says he hadn't needed to. "What happened when you ran?"

"I made it to London, but the mimics did too." Tony's voice is quiet. He can't bring himself to take his eyes off the road.

"You just keep going. You don't look back." Rhodey puts a hand on Tony's shoulder, and it lingers there for some time. Tony wants to ask _what if you can't stop looking back, what happens when looking back is really looking forward_ , but he can't bring himself to do so.

"If you didn't kill the Omega mimic, how did your time loop stop?" he asks instead.

Rhodey looks alarmed at the question. "Have I really not told you that yet?"

Tony shakes his head.

"Well, the time loop thing, it's in your blood."

Tony sighs. "I know that I'm pretty good at it now, but I wouldn't say--"

" _Literally_ in your blood," Rhodey continues, glaring at him. "If you lose too much blood or it gets diluted somehow, the power to reset the day is gone. I lost mine in a hospital, hooked up to an IV."

"Oh, so is that why you keep shooting me in the head when I get injured?"

Rhodey's expression slips from alarmed to appalled. "I've been shooting you in the head and I didn't tell you why?!"

"I figured I probably deserved it," Tony says, shrugging. A smile tugs at Rhodey's lips.

*

They are driving across France.

It's been too quiet for too long when Tony finally blurts out, "Rhodey, do you have family?"

Rhodey's eyes narrow. "'Rhodey'?"

"You said I could call you Rhodey," Tony explains quickly. He's prepared for this exchange now. "Well, technically what you said was that your friends call you 'Rhodey', but people don't usually bring up a cute nickname their friends call them just to rub it in your face that you're not allowed to use it."

This seems to satisfy Rhodey, as it usually does. "I've got some family in the States," he says, answering Tony's question. "My dad's still alive, and I've got a niece. How about you?"

Tony shrugs, hoping the movement seems easy and careless. "Mom died, what, ten years ago? Cancer. And Dad wasn't far behind. My company's my baby."

"Sounds lonely," Rhodey remarks, and Tony debates just turning the radio up to full blast and letting the conversation sputter out before Rhodey continues, "Why do you ask?"

"You're going to die." The words rush out of Tony. "That's not a threat, it's just a statement. We keep driving, and we get out of the car, and there's a certain point in this sequence of events where, no matter what I do, you die."

Rhodey is quiet for a moment, digesting this information. "Do you make it?"

"Past that point, yeah, but I never make it far enough, obviously." Tony slams his fists on the steering wheel. "I'm not--I can't--I can't save you."

"You don't have to save me, you have to save humanity," Rhodey says.

Tony can't help but glare at him. It's not that he doesn't want to save humanity, but at some point over what feels like the lifetime that Tony has been reliving in this time loop, he has come to the realization that he is almost as terrified by the idea of a world without James Rhodes in it as he is by the idea of a world without Tony Stark in it. He has spent so many days, _so_ many days, trying to figure out a way to get them both through this--he's basically a genius, right, so he _ought_ to be able to come up with something--and he has come up empty. They are driving across France to Rhodey's death, and he doesn't know how to fix it.

Some of that must be showing on his face, because Rhodey's expression is kind. "Is this the first time you've told me this?" Tony nods. "And how long have you spent trying to figure this out on your own?"

"Too long," Tony says. "Not long enough."

"Well then, let's put our heads together. My brains, your--uh, my brawn--and your, uh, good looks, we ought to be able to figure something out." Rhodey offers Tony a hopeful smile.

*

"Is this the first time you've told me this?" Rhodey asks.

Tony shakes his head. "Your brains and brawn, my good looks, we haven't come up with anything yet."

Rhodey's face is solemn. "Maybe you just have to move on without me."

*

"Is this the first time you've told me this?" Rhodey asks.

Tony nods.

*

"You look lost," Rhodey says.

"You know," Tony says, making up his mind suddenly, "I think you're right. Sorry to have bothered you."

*

"Your 'vision' theory was bullshit," Tony announces as Rhodey leads him to the secret basement room. Dr. Hansen follows them in, and she and Rhodey exchange a worried look at Tony's pronouncement. "We're going to need a new plan."

("You're thinking of a conference in Switzerland," Tony says to Dr. Hansen. "I met you there, didn't I? Your research was very good, Dr. Hansen; in retrospect, Stark Industries probably should have taken much more of an interest in it."

Her cheeks fill with color, and she looks pleased. "Please, call me Maya.")

"What do you mean 'bullshit'?" Rhodey demands.

"I mean I got to Germany, to the place the visions showed me, and the only thing I found there was an ambush. I am really hoping that you guys have some kind of Plan B."

(" _You_ got to Germany--just you?" Rhodey asks. Tony doesn't answer.)

Plan B involves some hardware Maya's been working on: rather than going on Tony's visions, they can use the device to tap directly into whatever's going on in Tony's bloodstream that makes him part of the mimic hivemind. The catch, of course, is that the hardware isn't here--it's locked in a safe, in the office of the general that Tony had sassed so many lifetimes ago to end up here in the first place.

Tony's made it out of camp before, so they start there.

*

"You know," Tony hisses to Rhodey as they are accosted on the street yet again, "This would be a lot easier if your face wasn't plastered on the side of every third bus that drives by."

Rhodey serves the sass right back to him. "I'm sorry, I should have thought of that before I came out the other side of the Battle of Verdun alive and then wasn't asked about my likeness being used in recruiting materials."

*

"You know," Rhodey says, standing away from the crowd surrounding Tony, "This would be a lot easier if you weren't the kind of guy who has a building with his name on it, from which he runs a company with his name on it, who throws a streaming-broadcast Tony Stark-branded World's Fair every year." Rhodey sounds amused; he is wearing a hoodie and a pair of ill-fitting sunglasses they'd lifted from an unattended table at a street cafe in the hopes of avoiding a situation like this.

"It's not my fault the public loves me," Tony says. He signs another autograph.

*

They are both wearing pilfered hoodies and sunglasses when they enter the London HQ, and they are apprehended almost immediately.

*

"Who is this?" Pepper asks as she answers the phone. "How did you get this number?" One of the perks of being the Savior of Verdun--well, probably one of the perks of being Not Tony Stark--is having access to a cell phone, so in an effort to think outside the box, Tony has called in some outside talent.

"Pepper, oh thank god, you picked up. It's me."

"Tony? Where have you _been_?!"

Tony snorts. "I'd tell you, but you'd think I was lying." Pepper's silence says _try me_ , so Tony gives it a try. "Well, after the meeting yesterday that the general's people said I missed but I actually _totally_ attended, I got press-ganged into the Army, and now Colonel Rhodes and I are trying to break into the general's office and steal a MacGuffin that will save the day with Science."

Silence from Pepper.

"You know how much I love Science."

Still silence.

"This is Rhodey's phone, by the way." Tony looks over at Rhodey, who is giving him a _wrap-this-up_ look. "He says hi." Rhodey rolls his eyes, so Tony shoves the phone at him. He grabs the phone, greets Pepper, reassures her that Tony's telling the truth (as far as he knows), and hands it back to Tony.

"Okay," Pepper says, "I assume you didn't call me just to chat. What do you need me to do?"

Tony looks surprised. That was a lot easier than he'd expected. "What can you find out for us about the general and the London HQ?"

"How do you mean?"

"We'll take anything; right now we're going in blind. Whatever you can find would be useful."

Pepper makes a thoughtful noise and tells Tony to give her twenty minutes and she'll call back.

When Tony hands the phone back, Rhodey gives him a strange look. "You think we can trust her?"

"It's a little late for that now, isn't it? But yes, I trust her, with my schedule, my company, and our lives."

There is an almost imperceptible pause, and then Rhodey asks, "You sleeping with her?"

Tony chuckles. "I should be so lucky. She's way too smart for that." He's not sure how to interpret the look of relief that flashes across Rhodey's face.

(One loop, towards the beginning, he'd bit the bullet and asked Maya if she and Rhodey were sleeping together. She had laughed out loud at the question.)

Pepper calls back as promised, having done a little digging; she has the general's schedule for the day, a blueprint for the building, the security codes for half the building's doors, and the location of the building's security feeds, which Tony is able to walk her through accessing.

"Pepper," Tony says, his hand over his heart, "You're a miracle worker. I don't know what I'd do without you."

"Miss more meetings, probably," Pepper says. Tony can almost hear her roll her eyes. "And fewer illegal things, I'm sure. Now, what do you want me to do with these security feeds?"

*

It takes five loops, two consistently-stolen sets of earpiece comms, and Pepper's excellent guidance to get them to the general's office. It takes three more loops to keep the general calm enough and alive enough to have a conversation, and four loops after that to convince him to part with Maya's hardware--Rhodey is much more convincing than Tony in the long run, even with Tony's "predict the future" party trick--and then they are confronted with the problem of how to get out.

"Remind me to ask you next time for a getaway car," Tony barks into his comm as Rhodey tries the handles of all the cars parked in the garage.

"Next time?!" Pepper doesn't know about the time loops, and she does not sound amused.

Tony doesn't answer, because Rhodey has found them a ride. He climbs into the passenger seat and waves his arms in a _go! go! go!_ motion before taking another look at the device they've just stolen. One end of it looks...menacing, and he's contemplating how the thing's used when Rhodey grabs it from him and stabs the menacing end into his leg. He swears, and through the pain, he sees their destination--Paris maybe?--and then the car hits a barricade and everything goes black.

*

Tony wakes up in handcuffs. No, wait, that's not right, this time it's different, each of his wrists shackled to something else. He opens his eyes. He is tied down to a bed in what looks like a hospital. Beside the bed, a bag of blood hangs ominously on an IV stand. Next to that, Rhodey is standing there, his sidearm in his hands. He's looking at Tony in alarm, his gun halfway up.

The first words out of Tony's mouth are _please don't shoot me_ , because he can tell already that he's lost enough blood that he's back to being human. He can die now, for good. The thought elates and terrifies him.

"Do you know where we're going?" Rhodey asks as he unhooks Tony's restraints.

"I saw Paris," Tony confirms. "We've never made it this far before, so it's all brand new from here." He tries to smile confidently at Rhodey, and he fails.

*

They make it to Paris, because it would be anticlimactic and stupid if Tony had made it this far and died trying to escape the hospital or the base or the country. He and Rhodey bring the squad of soldiers Tony is ostensibly assigned to with them; Tony has spent pretty much every loop, including the first one, ignoring them completely, so his rousing speech about Duty and Freedom and The Time to Act does not go over particularly well, especially without any future-knowledge tidbits to sprinkle in. Luckily, Rhodey's mere appearance seems to do the motivational trick, a helpful side effect of all those goddamn recruitment posters. Most of them die on the approach to the Omega mimic's lair, and Tony feels more than a little bad that all he knows about these people is some ranks and some nicknames. He'll mourn later, though; he and Rhodey are so close now, and there is no time for anything but the plan.

The plan is basically to drop as many grenades as they could carry onto the Omega mimic. What it lacks in finesse, it makes up in urgency and hopefully effectiveness, although it's been derailed slightly by the fact that they're a little bit injured from falling something like two stories down into the mimic lair and also they're surrounded by other mimics. Worse, between them and the Omega mimic is an angry-looking Alpha mimic, which they can't kill or else they get stuck back in another time loop.

"I'll draw it off," Rhodey says. He looks grim and determined as he moves to go; they both know he's making a suicide run.

Tony catches his wrist and babbles: _don't go, let me go instead, this is your fight and you should be the one to end it_. At this moment, here, now, even with how much Tony Stark loves Tony Stark, he would rather there be a world without Tony Stark in it than a world without James Rhodes.

"I'll make it farther than you would on that leg," Rhodey insists. His fingers wrap around Tony's wrist, and he grins. "Man, and I was just starting to like you." Rhodey leans forward, kisses Tony, and then he is gone. Tony stares after him, stunned.

*

Tony Stark wakes up, and he isn't dead--which is weird, okay, really fucking weird, because the last thing he remembers is dying. He remembers it very distinctly, pulling the pin on a whole bandolier of grenades and launching himself at the Omega mimic, sinking down, down, and everything exploding.

He doesn't seem to be dead.

A familiar voice addresses him. "Mr. Stark? We're making our final approach to London. Ms. Potts left instructions that you're to call her before your meeting."

Tony jolts upright. That's the pilot of his private jet, his voice on the in-flight intercom. That's what he'd said before, that morning that Tony had sassed the general and all of this had started. This is where Tony had woken up that morning, on his jet, almost to London.

He checks his phone. It _is_ that morning. This doesn't make any sense, but--

He calls Pepper. "Have you seen the news?" she asks, which is no sort of greeting at all. Turns out that overnight, the mimics all just curled up and died and nobody (nobody but Tony) knows why. Everyone in the HQ, including the general, is celebrating when Tony arrives.

It's a glorious time to be alive.

*

He finds Rhodey where Rhodey always is, in the training bays. He is seated on the floor of the bay, legs folded, hands on knees, eyes closed. Tony does not bother calling his name, just strides his way out into the bay. Rhodey opens one eye and watches as Tony weaves his way past the training drones, a curious look on his face.

Tony is wearing an expensive suit and an unmatched air of confidence, so Rhodey climbs to his feet and is more polite than usual as he says, "Hey, man, you look a little lost."

Tony cannot stop grinning. "I found my way here, didn't I?"


End file.
